Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

I said to the dasher, “So you’re talking about a bank robbery? Underground tunnels, things like that?”

“I overheard this conversation in a bar, so I don’t have all the pieces.”

“How about some pieces?” I said. “Do you have some ?”

Crickets.

I turned to Conklin and said, “Mr. Lambert is just making stuff up. It’s been a long day already, and I’ve had enough. Time to send him up to his cell and move on.”

Lambert said to Conklin, “A little patience, please, Officer. I’m getting to it. It’s dangerous for me to talk to you, understand?”

Conklin shrugged, stood up, pushed his chair in, and said, “Sergeant Boxer is the boss. She says we’re done, we’re done.”

“Okay. Listen,” said Lambert. “I’ve got the crew chief’s name. Loman. You’ll have something on him in your database.”

I asked, “Like the off-price clothing chain? L-o-e-h-m-a-n-n?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen his name in writing.”

“Mr. Loman’s first name?”

“Mister. Look, he just calls himself Mr. Loman. That’s all I know.”

“Wait here. I’ll be right back,” I said.

I went to my desk, said hey to a couple of colleagues, then brought my computer to life.

I ran the names Loehmann, Lowman, and Loman through all available databases. Too many hits came up, dozens in San Francisco. I’d need more information about who we were looking for to do anything with this tip, and the first name “Mister” wasn’t cutting it. My fingers were warmed up, so I ran Julian Lambert’s name again. As he’d said, he’d served short time and was currently on probation for shoplifting. But now that he’d claimed knowledge of a huge heist, I punched his name into the FBI database. I found zip, zero, nada. And Lambert had no known associates named Loman on record.

Our runner looked to be a liar, a nobody, and an utter waste of time.

Chapter 8

I returned to Interview 2 with two guards from our jail on the seventh floor.

I said, “Stand up, Mr. Lambert. Your escorts will take you to your cell. You should consider using your phone call to get a lawyer.”

“Wait. Wait a minute, will you?”

“I don’t have time for bull, Mr. Lambert. Tell your story to the judge.”

Lambert asked, “What? You found nothing on Loman?”

“I found a lot of names like that with many different spellings, dozens in Northern California, dozens in town. Without a first name and a location, your hot tip isn’t worth jack.”

“I have more information,” he said.

Our petty-thief runner was sounding desperate and no longer looked as happy to see me as he was when we arrested him.

Conklin said, “I’ve worked with Sergeant Boxer for a long time, Mr. Lambert. I know when she’s ready to lock up for the night.”

“Okay, I hear you,” he said. “Just—I need to tell you about this heist. Alone.”

I asked the guards to step outside, but I didn’t sit down.

“Speak,” I said to Lambert.

“I know one of the crew. I’ve got his name and address and I know that he’s the kind of guy who is always heavily armed.”

I sat down.

“His name is Chris Dietz. I know there will be a lot of people by that name. But that’s his real name.”

“What does he have to do with this heist?”

“He’s a hitter. Psycho variety. Loman hired him for this job. I met Dietz here, in the seventh-floor jail, about three years ago. It was memorable.”

I said, “I’ll pull Dietz’s sheet, but save me some time. What was he in for?”

“He was charged with holding up an armored car. Witness disappeared and the charges didn’t stick.”

“Okay, Mr. Lambert. Let’s have his address.”

After Lambert gave me the name of a cheap hotel located squarely in the pit of hell, I stood up, opened the door, and asked the guards to come in again.

“Please take Mr. Lambert up to seven.”

“Hey, I cooperated,” Lambert protested.

“If your information pans out, I’ll speak to the DA. The DA will speak to Mr. King. Your lawyer will tell you to be remorseful when you’re in front of the judge. Make it real.”

When Lambert was gone, Conklin and I walked back to our desks in the squad room. Shifts were changing. Day turning to night.

I did a search for Christopher Dietz. I found him.

I said to Rich, “There’s an arrest warrant out for Christopher Alan Dietz, whose last known address was Seattle. He was charged with armed robbery. Someone put up two hundred thousand for bail and he skipped. He’s got priors for shootings that didn’t stand up due to lack of evidence. We should get the Feds into this.”

Conklin picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “Cin. I’m working tonight. I know. I know. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

Cappy McNeil stopped by our desks. Cappy was a friend, a fellow cop who’d been working homicide longer than me, which made him an old-timer.

“I overheard the name Chris Dietz,” he said. “I know of him. A CI of mine just mentioned that Dietz could be planning some kind of job. Big one.”

“No kidding.”

I thanked Cappy for the tip, which gave some validity to Julian Lambert’s story and turned my thoughts about the interview with him upside down. And then I saw how this was going to go.

Conklin and I would brief Brady. He would call the SF branch of the FBI and our most senior SWAT commander, Reg Covington. Then we were all going to pay a call on Mr. Dietz, a bad guy with a gun said to be living in the Anthony Hotel.

I tried to imagine Dietz coming peacefully with us to the Hall.

I couldn’t see it.

Chapter 9

The Anthony Hotel was in the middle of a grubby block in SoMa, flanked by two buildings—on the left, a low-rent office building with a tax-preparation business on the ground floor; on the right, a liquor store with a sputtering neon sign and a massage parlor on the top two stories.

I’d been to this nightmarish six-story “hotel” before, once to investigate a suspicious death by hanging and once to disarm a drug-addled father who had threatened to take out his family of six. It was amazing that we’d gotten all of those kids out alive.

I knew the Anthony’s nearly bare lobby by heart, the scabby front desk, two broken-down armchairs, a bank of vending machines, and the pervasive smell of urine. Above the ground floor were five stories of rent-by-the-month rooms where drug addicts could indulge their habits in private and with all the amenities, like sinks and toilets and beds.

The hallways were pocked with bullet holes and in some places had been bloodied by heads being bashed against the walls. Inside the rooms, sinks had been pulled out and pipes in the ceiling had exploded, and I didn’t want to think about what passed for bathrooms.

To call the Anthony Hotel a dump was to flatter it. But Christopher Dietz, the professional hit man Julian Lambert had named, had taken a room here among the psychos, drug addicts, and many poor families with small children.

At eight that night Conklin and I, wearing Kevlar over our SFPD Windbreakers and armed with semiautos and two warrants, entered the lobby. With us were two FBI agents, Reginald Covington, the head of our SWAT team, and three of his men, all in full tactical gear. Four other SWAT commandos were outside, watching the front and rear entrances and standing by for whatever might come.

Was this overkill for one bail-jumping presumed hit man?

Only if he put up his hands and let us bring him in.

Covington asked the frightened desk troll which room Dietz occupied.

“He’s in 6R. Top floor, rear of the building.”

Covington said to the clerk, “Be cool and get out.” He didn’t have to be told twice.